Dynamic in vitro antibacterial studies provide valuable insight on effective dosing strategies prior to translating to in vivo models. Frequent sampling is required to monitor the pharmacodynamics (PD) of these studies, leading to significant work when quantifying the bacterial load of the samples. Spreading a bacterial suspension on agar to allow colony counting is a proven process for measuring very low levels of growth, but commercial automation equipment to handle agar plating and colony counting at scale is not readily available. We describe a process to greatly decrease the hands-on time required for PD assays by utilizing general-purpose liquid handling robots to plate bacteria and a custom-made plate imager to automate colony counting. The platform developed handles the biological assay from beginning to end as well as sample tracking at each step of the process. The process relies heavily on custom automation scheduling software to enable dynamic process decisions and coordinate data flow throughout. Using the described platform, we can efficiently quantify >100 PD samples per day while maintaining the necessary dynamic range of the assay. Alleviating the main bottleneck in the dynamic antibacterial studies has allowed us to accelerate the rate of experiments to provide antibacterial dosing data within shorter timelines.

在转化为体内模型之前，动态体外抗菌研究为有效给药策略提供了有价值的见解。需要频繁取样来监测这些研究的药效学 (PD)，从而在量化样品的细菌负荷时进行大量工作。将细菌悬浮液涂在琼脂上以进行菌落计数是一种经过验证的用于测量非常低水平的生长的过程，但用于处理琼脂平板和大规模菌落计数的商业自动化设备并不容易获得。我们描述了一个过程，通过利用通用液体处理机器人来板细菌和定制的板成像仪来自动化菌落计数，从而大大减少 PD 检测所需的动手时间。开发的平台从头到尾处理生物测定以及过程中每个步骤的样本跟踪。该流程在很大程度上依赖于定制的自动化调度软件来实现动态流程决策并协调整个数据流。使用所描述的平台，我们可以每天有效地量化 >100 个 PD 样本，同时保持检测的必要动态范围。缓解动态抗菌研究的主要瓶颈使我们能够加快实验速度，在更短的时间内提供抗菌剂量数据。每天 100 个 PD 样本，同时保持分析的必要动态范围。缓解动态抗菌研究的主要瓶颈使我们能够加快实验速度，在更短的时间内提供抗菌剂量数据。每天 100 个 PD 样本，同时保持分析的必要动态范围。缓解动态抗菌研究的主要瓶颈使我们能够加快实验速度，在更短的时间内提供抗菌剂量数据。